Wash­ing­ton should lift its dec­ades-old ban on crude-oil ex­ports re­gard­less of some oil com­pan­ies’ op­pos­i­tion to it be­cause it’s in the coun­try’s na­tion­al in­terests, Amer­ic­an Pet­ro­leum In­sti­tute CEO and Pres­id­ent Jack Ger­ard said Tues­day.

Ger­ard ad­dressed a re­port by Na­tion­al Journ­al pub­lished Tues­day that a rift was brew­ing with­in the in­dustry — between do­mest­ic pro­du­cers and re­finers — over wheth­er the ban should be lif­ted.

Be­cause the ban ap­plies only to crude oil, re­finers are bet­ter­ing their bot­tom lines by ex­port­ing re­fined oil products at re­cord rates. Some re­finers op­pose end­ing the ban. That’s not the case with API’s more than 500 mem­bers, Ger­ard said Tues­day.

“We be­lieve the na­tion­al in­terest will over­whelm self-in­terest,” Ger­ard said in an in­ter­view after his group’s an­nu­al lunch­eon. “There will be some who will ar­tic­u­late self-in­terest. We don’t be­lieve that’s in the best in­terest to the na­tion.”

Ger­ard was asked if there was un­an­im­ity among all API mem­bers, in­clud­ing those that are primar­ily re­finers like Mara­thon Pet­ro­leum and Phil­lips 66 as well as in­dustry gi­ants such as Ex­xon Mo­bil and Chev­ron that both pro­duce and re­fine oil. “I know our mem­ber com­pan­ies are on the same page,” he said.

In emailed re­sponses to Na­tion­al Journ­al last week, spokes­men for Mara­thon and Phil­lips said they don’t op­pose lift­ing the ban. An­oth­er re­finer, Valero, said it does not sup­port end­ing the ban. Valero is not an API mem­ber but is part of the Amer­ic­an Fuel and Pet­ro­chem­ic­al Man­u­fac­tur­ers, a small trade group rep­res­ent­ing re­finery com­pan­ies whose of­fi­cial po­s­i­tion is also sup­port­ive of lift­ing the ban.

Some re­finers privately op­pose lift­ing the ban, and oth­ers are still fig­ur­ing out what their of­fi­cial po­s­i­tion should be.

Ger­ard de­livered his an­nu­al State of the En­ergy speech at his group’s lunch­eon Tues­day, and to the sur­prise of some ana­lysts and at­tendees, he fell short of call­ing ex­pli­citly for lift­ing the oil-ex­port ban, which dates back to the 1973 OPEC oil em­bargo, to be ended. So, was that in­ten­tion­al?

“No, not at all,” Ger­ard said. “I prob­ably fell short in a lot of areas.”

He had also in­dic­ated a couple of months earli­er that this wasn’t a top-tier is­sue for his group, a sign of how quickly things can change in a city where polit­ics usu­ally slow everything down.

“We’re not fo­cused on that primar­ily in the short-term,” Ger­ard said in an in­ter­view with Na­tion­al Journ­al in Novem­ber.

In less than two months, state­ments by ma­jor oil com­pan­ies and a sig­nal of will­ing­ness to re­vis­it the ban by En­ergy Sec­ret­ary Ern­est Mon­iz has thrust the is­sue to the front burn­er. A ma­jor speech by Sen­ate En­ergy and Nat­ur­al Re­sources Com­mit­tee rank­ing mem­ber Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, call­ing for an end to the crude-ex­port ban also gave new en­ergy to the is­sue.

This has all changed Ger­ard’s out­look.

“I think the events have over­taken the ori­gin­al thought that [the ex­port ban is­sue] would gradu­ally roll out over time,” he said.

While the de­bate has come quickly, ac­tion in Con­gress is likely to be much slower, if it comes at all.

The Fed has raised rates another quarter point, to a target rate of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent. Two members dissented in favor of keeping rates stable. As of this moment, they expect to make three more quarter-point hikes in 2018, and two in 2019. This meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was Janet Yellen's last as chair.

At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said "there's nothing inappropriate about FBI officials on special counsel Robert Mueller's team holding political opinions so long as it doesn't affect their work." Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said recently disclosed texts among former members of Mueller's team, "which were turned over to the panel Tuesday night by the Justice Department, revealed 'extreme bias.'"